Commercial article printing typically occurs during the production of the article. For example, ball skins are printed with patterns or logos prior to the ball being completed and inflated. Consequently, a non-production establishment, such as a distribution site or retail store, for example, in a region in which potential product customers support multiple professional or collegiate teams, needs to keep an inventory of products bearing the logos of various teams popular in the area. Ordering the correct number of products for each different logo to maintain the inventory can be problematic.
One way to address these issues in non-production outlets is to keep unprinted versions of the products, and print the patterns or logos on them at the distribution site or retail store. Printers known as direct-to-object (DTO) printers have been developed for printing individual objects. These DTO printers have a plurality of printheads that are typically arranged in a vertical configuration with one printhead over another printhead. These printheads are fixed in orientation. When the objects to be printed are ovoid or shapes having multiple indentations and protrusions, such as balls, water bottles, and the like, printing a complete image on the surface accurately is difficult because portions of the surface of object fall away from the planar face of the printheads. Multiple alignment issues between printheads arise because the ejectors in the printheads eject the marking material across gaps of various distances. The movement of the objects past the printheads taken in conjunction with the various gap distances also affects the coordination of the timing of the signals used to operate the ejectors in the printheads. These issues include the droop in the drops as they cross the gaps, the orientation of the ejectors in the printheads, and the like. For example, the drops from an ejector that is not truly oriented perpendicularly to an object stray further from the intended flight path as the imaging distance increases. Identifying and measuring these effects so the data used to operate the printheads during printing could be modified to compensate for these effects would be beneficial.